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The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
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Steinbeck retells the early books of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur in modern prose, beginning with Arthur’s concealed birth, the sword that proves his kingship and the wars required to establish the Round Table. Merlin’s guidance and foreknowledge shape the new kingdom, while the stories of Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, Gawain and Lancelot introduce the rival loyalties and desires that threaten Arthur’s ideal.
The unfinished work preserves the violence, wonder and abrupt movement of medieval romance while giving its characters more explicit psychological motives. It is a literary reimagining of Arthurian legend rather than a reconstruction of post-Roman Britain, and the surviving narrative is accompanied by letters that reveal Steinbeck’s long but incomplete attempt to make Malory accessible to modern readers.
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